Acacia exigua
Acacia exigua, commonly known as muntalkura wattle, and as jonanyong or jananyung by the Kurrama people, is a species of flowering plant in the family Fabaceae and is endemic to northern Western Australia. It is a shrub or tree with fibrous grey bark, thread-like, slightly curved to s-shaped phyllodes, spikes of light golden yellow flowers and linear, firmly papery pods.
Description
Acacia exigua is a shrub or small tree that typically grows to a height of and normally has a dense crown. It has fibrous grey bark and ribbed, terete and glabrous branchlets. The phyllodes are thread-like, slightly curved to slightly s-shaped, long and about in diameter and finely striated with a delicately curved to hook-shaped tip. The flowers are light golden yellow and borne in two spikes long in axils on a peduncle long. Flowering mostly occurs between May and July, and the pods are linear, shallowly curved, firmly papery, up to long and wide, greyish brown, constricted between and slightly raised over the seeds The seeds are oblong to elliptic, long, slightly shiny brown with a whitish aril on the end.
Taxonomy
Acacia exigua was first formally described in 2014 by Ian Mark Turner in Annales Botanici Fennici, replacing Acacia exilis Maslin, an illegitimate name, because it was a homonym of a fossil species. The specific epithet means 'small or feeble', referring to the phyllodes.
Distribution and habitat
Muntalkura wattle grows on low, rocky hills in iron-rich soils and is confined to the Hamersley Range between Hamersley Station and south-east to Coppin Pool, in the Gascoyne and Pilbara bioregions of northern Western Australia.